Fallen
by Magery
Summary: Azula always was on the edge of things - the edge of life, the edge of danger. The edge of sanity. It is only fitting that he finds her there once again, eight years after the Fire Lord's defeat.


The Southern Air Temple is still abandoned, still crumbling into dust, as it was the last time he visited. The only difference is that Azula stands on the edge of the cliff that once overlooked the lower half of the former Air Nation village, eerily still and as silent as the ash that drifted there a century earlier. He walks up to her, neither cautious nor confident, moving much as the air might until he stands next to his former enemy.

"Avatar," she says without turning.

"Princess," he replies in kind.

"Am I?" she asks curiously, a hint of what could be amusement in her voice.

"To me," he answers, because even years of being Zuko's friend cannot make the Air Nation forget the sins of Fire Nation royalty. And if Azula is sometimes everything he imagined a princess should be, well, that is only a minor consideration.

She turns to look at him, moving slowly as if he is a wild animal she does not wish to startle. As he turns in kind he cannot help but hide his momentary frown. To Aang, Azula was once a dragon: fierce, indomitable, bending fire in much the same way she breathed. A relentless enemy, and a sight he would never tire to see. But now, he thinks as he studies the figure before him, she resembles nothing more than a broken mirror. All sharp edges, twisted reflections, and _wrongness_.

Her eyes are tired, more dying sunlight than liquid flame, and her face misses some of the haughty tension that made her Azula. He even finds himself noticing the way she does not smile mockingly to his face, the way she is no longer edged with madness like the blood-red trimmings on her faded robes.

"Why are you here, Azula?" he asks, more to distract himself from his thoughts than out of any real interest.

"To think," she says. "To remember. To wonder where it all went wrong."

The answer is not something he would have ever expected from her, and it shows on his face. Her lips twist into an amused smirk, and for a moment she becomes a memory of who she used to be. But then the moment passes. When she speaks, her tone is mocking, and yet it is missing an edge, no longer as sharply vicious as lightning.

"Even I can make mistakes, Avatar," and there is the title again. She has never said his name, and he does not think she ever will. "The only difference is what we think those mistakes were."

There is a pause, but there is something unnatural about it; it takes him a little while to realize it's because there's no calculation. He is not speaking to the Sapphire Rose, the born lucky Princess of the Fire Nation. This is not all part of some fiendishly complex plan he will fail to understand even when its jaws clamp into his flesh. Azula is not silent because it suits her purposes. She is silent because she does not know what next to say.

Eventually, the moment passes, and she seems to come back to herself.

"Where are the peasants?" she asks, and it is only through supreme self-control that Aang does not breathe an unconscious sigh of relief at the semblance of normality. It might be wrong of him to find a broken Azula disconcerting, but that does not change the fact that he does. Azula was once awe-inspiring, and there is too much monk in him to take any joy from standing within the wreckage.

"Do you really care?" he asks back. Not because it would hurt too much to mention Katara—he got over that long ago—but because if he knows one thing about Azula, it is that you must never tell her more than you have to.

"So you _are_ here alone," she says, almost with satisfaction. Aang may know the steps of this dance, but Azula has had them mastered for years.

"Yes," he nearly bites out, and a smirk briefly flickers across her face. Even broken, Azula is still dangerous. But she does not say anything, rather turning back away from him to face the cliff, raising her gaze to study the empty sky as if it contains the reason for her defeats. Considering what happened on the day of Sozin's Comet, perhaps it does.

Aang turns back too, embracing the airbender within to its fullest extent. He can feel the way the mouse-eagle's wings twist on the thermal high above, wild and free, and the way the air leaves Azula's lungs like waves lapping against the shore. This, more than any other, is his domain, and he often comes here simply to stand and _feel_ the world.

Yet something about Azula feels wrong. She is missing something, lacking a spark, no longer humming with danger like the fire running through her veins. But he doesn't know what, or why, and so for the moment he chooses to ignore it.

They stand in silence for what must be hours, past the moment twilight falls, and though he promised himself not to, he breaks the silence first.

"Azula, why are you shivering?"

For a moment, she freezes, like a startled dog-hare, but then the tension drops from her like so many unwanted clothes.

"Why do you think?" she asks, almost bitterly, and then realization flashes through him like her lightning did so long ago.

"Oh." A pause. "I'm sorry."

"Are you?" She sounds surprised, no doubt because she could hear the truth in his voice but cannot understand why. Azula could see strength in her enemies, strength and power, but he very much doubts she could see beauty. Aang is the Avatar, however, and a thousand past lives have taught him an appreciation for the arts of mortal benders. The Fire Nation has not always been his enemy, after all. It was Roku's home, once, as it is now Zuko's.

His only response is to reach over, touching the back of her hand, ignoring its softness as a wave of heat pulses out of him into her body, restoring some of the colour to her cheeks and driving away the cold as only a firebender can. She may have killed him, but even standing here, amid the ruins of the Air Nation, he refuses to see suffering he can prevent. He knows Gyatso would be proud of him.

She does not thank him, but he does not expect her to. They stand there for perhaps half an hour longer before she turns to walk away. He knows from experience that firebenders rise with the sun, and so they usually rest earlier than others. But still, he has to ask.

"Where are you going?"

"You're not my keeper, Avatar," she tosses over her shoulder, and he can't help but laugh, though his next words are serious.

"Better me than Zuko," he answers, and the way she skips in her stride tells him she may have honestly forgotten she's an escaped prisoner. She walks away in silence for a few more steps, but then eventually relents.

"I'm tired," she says. "Goodnight, Avatar."

"Goodnight, Princess."

He turns back, studying the stars, scattered across the sky like so many precious jewels, some of them barely visible but nonetheless still reminding him that even the Avatar is nothing compared to the infinite majesty of space. He finds it humbling, humbling and necessary; it would not do to lose himself in his power. In many ways, he thinks that may have been part of what happened to Azula.

It is another hour before he returns to Appa's side to rest, and if his sleep is fitful, it is only because seeing Azula has stirred up memories of the war.

* * *

Azula is a monster. She knows she is – her mother said so, after all. Well, she never said it outright, but it was there in the glances and embraces and everything else Zuko got that she didn't. But she didn't care— _didn't she?_ —because being a monster made her _dangerous_ , and if they wouldn't love her, they would learn to fear the very mention of her _name_.

And, for a time, they did.

But then she fell, and now she has almost come full circle, waking amid the ruins of the Southern Air Temple, the very place the war began a century earlier. There's a poignancy to this place, one only enhanced by the unconscious presence of the Avatar. In many ways, it resembles how the Fire Nation crumbled in the face of the last airbender. It's a reminder, really, of how they lost the war before it ever began, all because a thousand elite firebenders empowered by a once-in-a-century celestial event couldn't manage to kill a single twelve-year-old boy.

When he first appeared the day before, she wasn't entirely sure how to react. Without her bending, she is irrelevant, mere dust on the very winds he controls; to try and escape would have been embarrassing futile. And yet, he did nothing but talk to her, save for one little reminder of her situation at the very end. It was almost as if he was trying to help her without appearing to do so.

She doesn't _need_ help. She is the Sapphire Rose, all blue flames and thorns and beauty. She was born lucky, moulded into everything a Princess of the Fire Nation should be—stunning, deadly, and wickedly intelligent, with a soul as black as the ash she leaves behind—and there is nothing wrong with her.

Nothing except for the fact she cannot bend, the fact she is an escaped prisoner, and the fact the only thing she has left of her former station is the robe she's currently wearing.

No, there's nothing wrong with her at all.

She stretches almost gingerly as she moves to get out of bed, if bed could really refer to the ancient stone slab she had slept on. It was cushioned only by age-old airbender linens, ones she'd found hidden deep in a part of the temple that had escaped the Fire Nation's first, devastating attack relatively unscathed.

The world around her is entirely dark, the sun a distant memory from where she resides in the heart of the temple. She knows from bitter experience that she rises with it—like all firebenders do—regardless of whether she can bend or whether she cannot. These days, it does not bother her so much. She is more thankful that her preternatural night-vision has remained as well, seemingly a solely physiological element of being a daughter of Agni rather than something attached to the spiritual side of bending.

She does not take long to dress herself, nor to ready herself for whatever her day will contain. How could she? She has no servants, no choices of clothing, nothing except the semi-tattered robe she's practically living in and whatever food she can scavenge. It's a hard life, almost as hard as living under Ozai, but she contents herself with the fact it's better than a cell.

Moving through the temple's ancient passages, she makes her way toward the courtyard, not entirely sure what she's expecting to find. She should try to run, find another place to stay that hasn't been compromised, but she can't really be bothered to care. Now that the Avatar has discovered her, if he wants her captured, she will be.

He is older now, no longer a child but rather a demigod in the prime of his life. Even if he seems to act much the same as he did when they fought a war against one another, she cannot bring herself to forget he is the man who even death could not take forever—she _knows_ her lightning killed him, there was no way it could not have—and against whom the might of Ozai and the Fire Nation's armies crumbled into ash and nothingness.

When she arrives, it is to find the subject of her thoughts resting cross-legged in the middle of the courtyard, meditating. It would not be a particularly interesting sight, as even she considered meditation necessary at times to clear the mind, especially before learning new bending forms… except for the fact he is floating about a metre off the ground. His tattoos are glowing, but, as she moves closer, he does not appear to react to her presence. The rise and fall of his chest is slow and constant, almost as if he were asleep.

Eight years ago—even perhaps two or three, before she lost her bending—she would have attacked. Probably with a searing bolt of lightning followed by a maelstrom of sapphire flames in an attempt to take advantage of his seeming relaxation and lack of caution. Now, she does not even try to get his attention. She does not know how he would react if broken from his trance, and she does not particularly care enough to try and find out.

Instead, she chooses to pass the hovering airbender, moving to where he had found her yesterday. She does not know much about what happens when a person loses their bending—such a thing was not spoken of by many in the Fire Nation, and certainly not to her—nor how they are supposed to get it back, but she suspects it's probably something spiritual. Normally, she would have no patience for such trivial things, but the war taught her many things in the process of taking her sanity.

Iroh, the most spiritual firebender she had ever met, found a way to render even _lightning_ impotent. The Avatar, the Bridge to the Spirit World, had managed to take _Ozai's_ bending by force. A peasant waterbender—waterbending being the most spiritual of the bending arts, apart from airbending—had managed to defeat _her_ in an Agni Kai.

No, Azula has learned her lessons, and learned them well. Spirits, and the spiritual world, are not terms synonymous with weakness. Not by any means.

If she has to somehow reconnect with the spiritual side of firebending, or embrace inner peace, or some seemingly-ridiculous claptrap like that in order to regain her bending, she will do it and do it gladly. Not that she's had much time to do so while on the run, even if she escaped her prison—the prison of her body, anyway—a few years ago.

So, she stands again on the edge of the temple cliff, a step away from plummeting to a death she will not be able to escape a second time, and tries to centre herself. To find whatever 'spark' she was born with deep inside that let her firebend, that let her look at the world and tell it to _burn_.

After perhaps half an hour, she hears footsteps somewhere behind her. They are soft and almost silent, the step of someone who walks almost not on the same plane as mortal men but _above_ it. She doubted there would be many others actually capable of hearing them. She only could because she had demanded perfection of herself in every area of her body.

"Avatar," she greets, not bothering to acknowledge him further.

"Princess," he replies, as if following some formula set up the day before.

The silent stretches onward, but there is something oddly _impatient_ about it. It's the silence of a man who wishes to say something but does not quite know how to say it. One she knows well from years in the Fire Nation court. And so, she is content to wait, knowing that, eventually, the Avatar will say what he has come here to say. Most likely, it will be something on the lines of bringing her back to the Fire Nation.

That final, fatal step would look tempting were it not for the fact she is sure he would be able to catch her well before she hit the ground.

"You know, every Avatar has a spiritual mentor in the form of one of their past lives," is not what she was expecting him to say, but he rushes onward before she can properly react. "Mine is Roku – did you know he's your great-grandfather on your mother's side? Anyway, I was talking to him this morning. I'm sure you saw me meditating when you came out here."

He pauses, and the irony of an airbender having to catch his breath forces her to hide a smile. Not a flicker of it shows on her face, though it wouldn't matter as she is yet to turn to look at him anyway. Not sure where he is going with his speech, she decides not to interrupt as he opens his mouth to speak once again.

"We had a rather… interesting discussion, and he helped me make a decision," he says, and the conversation is back on track.

"You needed to talk to Roku to decide to bring me in? My my, Avatar, don't tell me you wanted to keep me all for yourself," she delivers with just the right mixture of self-satisfied mockery and amusement. She had often mocked Zuko for his swords, for why would one need blades when words could cut just as sharply?

"Actually, I'm not going to take you back quite yet, Azula," he says, ignoring her barb.

"Oh?" she asks, arching a once-elegant eyebrow even if the effect is lost since he cannot see her face.

"I'm going to help you regain your bending, first."

It takes her some time to respond; mostly because she has absolutely no idea what to say. Part of her wants to rant and rave and tell him that she doesn't need his help. Another part assumes he must be playing some cruel trick and wonders if she can move quickly enough to slap him square on the jaw.

A third wants to show him some form of appreciation or gratitude, but she has no idea how to do either. She's not even entirely sure what they _look_ like. The rest of her is simply shocked into silence, save for a little voice in the back of her head that wonders if this is the first time anyone has seen her lost for words.

"Why?" she manages to get out eventually, not bothering to manoeuvre or manipulate. She just wants to know what on earth could possess a man she once _killed_ to try and arm her with the very weapon she used to do so. The little hesitant pause before he speaks tells her he's not entirely sure himself.

"This isn't you, Azula," he says after a while, as she sees gesturing up and down her body out of the corner of her eye. "What you are now, how you move, how you speak… it just isn't _you_. Your bending is more a part of your self-identity than anything else, and I think you need to get it back."

"Most would agree that how I am now is _infinitely_ preferable to how I once was, Avatar," she says. There's a reason Azula always lies, of course, as there is for everything she does. The truth _hurts_ , at least when it comes to her, and she does not appreciate the way the Avatar seems to wield it like a weapon.

"Yes, but you don't. I know _this_ ," he gestures to her once again, "isn't what you want."

"What I _want_ , Avatar?" she asks, unable to control her laughter. It bubbles up from somewhere deep, the same way madness does. "What I want doesn't matter. It hasn't mattered for _eight years_."

"It matters to me," he says, and her laughter dies as quickly as it appeared.

" _Why?_ " It is all she can say, because she does not understand how, after all this time, someone still seems to _care_. Nor does she understand why, of all people, it is _he_ who does.

"Everyone deserves a second chance, and nobody's ever bothered to give you yours."

She might have scoffed at him, once, in the past, but not today. After all, he's said what she'd often wondered bitterly about, in those fleeting moments of lucidity—of sanity—while she was in the asylum. Ever since she was born, she had been rigorously defined, assigned roles and never asked if they were what she wanted.

Ozai had used her as a tool, and she had thanked him for it because then at least she'd mattered to _one_ side of her family.

Ursa had seen her as a monster, and she had accepted the role because then, in her own twisted way, she was at least fulfilling her mother's expectations.

Zuko had seen her as an antagonist—not a sister—ever since she had proven herself his superior. She'd been a cruel child, true, but all children can be cruel, and even adults cannot always handle a life of privilege and remain ordinary., She had repaid him in kind because he'd never have believed anything else. _Azula always lies_ was an oddly accurate maxim, because eventually she'd even been lying to herself.

Of course, that didn't meant she thought she was some tragic, misunderstood anti-heroine. She was still _Azula_ ; to her, the world was a dark, dangerous place, and she revelled in it. She loved power, power and control, and she did not take well to be denied (it had, quite literally, driven her insane). By most systems of judgement, she was evil, and she knew it.

But some evils are necessary.

After all, Ozai would have needed a tool regardless; without her, it would have been Zuko's role, and if he thought he could have resisted Ozai for long, the scar on his face clearly spoke otherwise. The less time Ursa spent with her, the more time she spent with Zuko, granting him the childhood Azula had never had.

Beyond that, if it hadn't been for their mother's actions, Zuko wouldn't even be _alive_. She doubted Ursa would have done the same for her. And without her as his antagonist, he never would have been so driven to improve his own bending, to learn skills and techniques and everything he needed to try and one day exceed her. He wouldn't be who he was today.

Azula had shaped Zuko into everything he was, and everything she wasn't. If she had never existed, Zuko never would have joined the winning side. But she had, and instead he was Firelord, a friend of the Avatar, and one of the most powerful firebenders in the world.

Parts of her might hate him for always truly been born lucky—whereas, in many ways, she was unlucky to have been born—and for taking everything that she still thought should have been hers, but she still found it a darkly amusing irony that it was she who had led him to where he was today.

"You are a fool, Avatar," she says, almost softly. "Given a second chance, I would burn this world to the ground rather than live in what it's become."

"Well," the Avatar replies, "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

There is an optimism in his voice that she finds almost unnerving.

It's almost like faith.

* * *

 **Hello, friends! This has been sitting around on my hard-drive for a couple of years, and I stumbled over it again today. I figured with some editing, and a few added lines to actually give it an ending of sorts (before it just trailed off _even more_ ), I could turn it into something maybe worth reading.**

 **Amazingly, yes, this is a story with Aang and Azula in it that doesn't involve shipping them.**

 **Thing is, while I love them together because I am trash, Azula was my favourite character in ATLA well before I ever considered the concept of her with Aang. This isn't the tale of Azula and Aang - this is the tale of _Azula_ , and Aang just happens to be in it. **

**I should note, though, that Azula's opinions are her own - I've tried to capture her thinking about the world as if it was _her_ doing the thinking, and you should not take it as definite fact. She's rather selfish. **


End file.
